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"The few, the proud, the chumps," the peace of Clint Eastwood upon them. Frost's soldier, not dead but worse, utterly helpless outside of his territory, "mean, nasty and tired." He's found in the drunk tank still rasping out raunchy anecdotes, back to the barracks he goes, the only place for him. "Freeze-dried," "relic," "ancient fucking history," the gunnery sergeant facing a shambolic platoon and his own middle age. He plays straight man to the rapping recruit (Mario Van Peebles) and wrestles in the pit with the Annapolis major (Everett McGill), but needs help in dealing with the spiky ex-wife (Marsha Mason). ("Sensitive dialogue" out of Harper's Bazaar, just the thing to curb "a generally poor attitude toward the female of the species.") The Reagan state of affairs means craggy jarheads threatening to shove things up each other's asses, a blistering cock opera. The veiny ramrod in camouflage, the Eastwood portrait blunt and thoughtful. What Price Glory?, The Fighting Seabees, The Dirty Dozen... Unruly kids in arduous training, learning the sound of an AK-47 and the significance of "a little piece of war." A grim past, the limbo of the present, no country for old monsters. Taking a hill in Grenada has to do as a consolation prize after Korea and Vietnam, a thrifty invasion under Caribbean skies. "Bastards with meat cleavers for pricks and kerosene for blood," the missus is rather more concise, "all balls, no brain." Eastwood savors all of this uproariously, right down to the stogie picked off an enemy's corpse. The Fordian military march (The Long Gray Line) is viewed from a different angle over the ending credits, and one year later there's Full Metal Jacket. With Moses Gunn, Eileen Heckart, Bo Svenson, Boyd Gaines, Arlen Dean Snyder, Tom Villard, Ramón Franco, and Pete Koch.
--- Fernando F. Croce |